This invention is directed to a technique for testing the effectiveness of advertisements and, more particularly, to determine the likelihood that the viewer of a television commercial will turn away from the commercial to programming on another channel.
Placing advertisements on commercial television is expensive. It is, therefore, very helpful to an advertiser before he commits a commercial for broadcast to have an indication of its impact on viewers. The impact of a commercial can be tested, for example, in the following two ways. Firstly, the level of interest in the commercial by the viewer can be measured by the extent to which he switches away from it to programming on other channels. If the viewer fails to stay on the channel showing the commercial then obviously it has failed to hold the viewer's interest and the advertiser's money may be wasted. Secondly, even if the viewer watches all or part of the commercial, he must remember the information which the advertiser is eager to convey like, for example, the product and brand name.
An important aspect of the testing process for a commercial before it is broadcast commercially is to display it under relaxed conditions in a natural environment. The environment must have no abnormal distractions to distort the test results. However, the normal distractions to which the viewer is exposed must be provided. For example, program alternatives to the commercial must be made available if such alternatives normally exist. This prevents unusual concentration on the commercial by the test subject so that distorted results due to artificially created interest are avoided. What is normal or abnormal distraction can be defined in terms of the viewer's home since that is his most natural environment. The standard surroundings are not distracting yet the option of viewing programs on other channels reflects reality. As desirable as such an environment is, it is not practical to take testing equipment door-to-door. Thus, the only practical way to do it now is to actually broadcast the commercial and then telephone test subjects with a list of questions to check their recall. Unfortunately, this incurs the significant expense of broadcasting the commercial and the concomitant loss of confidentiality which the advertiser would prefer to avoid at the test stage.
It is desirable to measure several other aspects indicative of the effectiveness of a commercial. For example, commercials are typically broadcast in groups, or clusters. The order of placement of a commercial within a group may have a bearing on its effectiveness. Also, the number of times a commercial is seen may have a positive, or under certain conditions even a negative, effect on retention. In addition, a commercial may encounter "wear-out" when, after it is seen more than a certain number of times, viewers become tired of it and it loses any effectiveness it may have previously had.